Definition:
A brief, usually indirect reference to a person, place, or event--real or fictional. Adjective: allusive. See also: Allusion and Illusion.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to play with"Examples and Observations:
- "Even sports newsletters allude to [Robert] Frost. When a New York Giants tackle was diagnosed as having cancer, Inside Football commented, 'The rest, since there was no more to build on there, turned to their affairs.' That's an allusion to a 1916 Frost poem about a boy's accidental death: 'No more to build on there. And they, since they/ Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.' (The poem's title is 'Out, Out--,' itself an allusion by Frost to Shakespeare; after Lady Macbeth dies, Macbeth speaks of life's shortness, 'Out, out, brief candle!')"
(William Safire, "On Language: Poetic Allusion Watch." The New York Times, July 24, 1988) - "I violated the Noah rule: predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does."
(Warren Buffett) - "An allusion which is explained no longer has the charm of allusion. . . . In divulging the mystery, you withdraw its virtue."
(Jean Paulhan) - "Comic books have become reference points in the most popular and the most esoteric fiction and art. Everyone understands a Superman allusion or a Batman joke."
(Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow, Basic Books, 2005) - "I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the Planet Earth."
(Senator Barack Obama, speech at a fund-raiser for Catholic charities, October 16, 2008) - "Senator Obama's call to 'ask not just what our government can do for us, but what we can do for ourselves' had an even more direct connection to the inaugural address of the first G.I. Generation president of the United States."
(Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, Millennial Makeover. Rutgers Univ. Press, 2008)
Pronunciation: ah-LOO-zhen
